WIlliam Foege was director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1977 to 1983. An epidemiologist, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 for his contributions to the eradication of smallpox.
Twenty-five years ago last month, something big started, a collaborative venture that changed the lives of hundreds of millions of people. For me the story began two decades earlier, when I was living in a Nigerian village, learning the language to help run a local health program. I can’t forget the constant scratching of people in that village.
Their bodies were the battleground for parasites. Microfilaria were coursing through these people, the result of a female black fly s***ing blood while depositing tiny larval forms of microfilaria that would mature as adult <a href="http://www.who.int/apoc/onchocerciasis/lifecycle/en/index.html" data-xslt="_http">Onchocerca worms</a>. As the microfilaria died, proteins released from a parasite they carried, Wolbachia, caused itching and inflammation that led to various ailments, blindness being the worst.
In October 1987, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._Roy_Vagelos" data-xslt="_http">Roy Vagelos</a>, then the chief executive of Merck, launched the largest pharmaco-philanthropic venture ever. He approached me, as the head of the <a href="http://www.sph.emory.edu/cms/departments_centers/centers/tfcsd.html" data-xslt="_http">Task Force for Child Survival</a> in Atlanta, and offered the drug — now copyrighted as Mectizan — for free if the task force could devise a distribution system.
Merck said that it would supply the drug as long as it was needed. Extended surveillance has shown this to be one of the safest drugs ever developed. And because the drug ended the itching suffered by so many, it was accepted much more easily than had been anticipated.
The original target of treating 6?million people in six years was achieved in four years. Only 15 years after the program started, 250 million treatments had been given. Last year, the <a href="http://www.mectizan.org/" data-xslt="_http">Mectizan Donation Program</a>provided 140 million treatments for onchocerciasis in Africa, Latin America and Yemen. A quarter-century after the program began, 1 billion treatments have been provided free by Merck.
Some regard it as politically incorrect to thank pharmaceutical companies, but in this case saying thanks seems insufficient. For millions spared the loss of sight and even more spared the burden of itching, there is no adequate way to thank Merck.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-partners-in-fighting-disease/2012/11/22/f127b0e2-1f00-...
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